Religious references and resonances can’t save the Man of Steel sequel from an overabundance of characters and plot — and a dearth of inspiration and hope.

STEVEN D. GREYDANUS

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, from Man of Steel director Zack Snyder, is so lovingly crafted, so grandly operatic and mythological in spirit and scope, so beautifully visualized and in some ways fearless in execution, that at times I felt a Stockholm syndrome-like impulse to relax my grip on my misgivings and just go with the flow. Granted, this movie is not for me, but at times it seems like it could be a movie for someone.

Yes, it’s the bleakest, most violent, most joyless mainstream superhero movie to date, with an R rating in spirit, if not in fact (a concession to be rectified on home video, where there will be an R-rated version).

Yes, Henry Cavill’s Man of Steel is glum, hopeless, passive and directionless. And yes, Ben Affleck’s new Dark Knight is brutal and even murderous — a nightmare darker than the darkest pages of Frank Miller’s landmark 1980s graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns, which pointedly emphasized Batman’s ethic against killing. (Despite this, the film so heavily quotes from The Dark Knight Returns, both verbally and visually, that I assume Miller will be getting royalty checks.)

In some ways, the thing evokes Snyder’s own adaptation of that other influential 1980s graphic novel, Watchmen: a nihilistic story set in a world with room for supers, but not heroes. Well, isn’t that a valid interpretation, or critique, of the superhero genre? Again, I’m not a Watchmen fan, but it’s a classic for a reason. Is there some rule that Superman has to be inspiring? Some reason iconic heroes shouldn’t be reimagined as jackbooted fascists riding roughshod over basic rights?

An absolute reason, no. A relative reason, yes.

Yes, if you’re going to have Batman himself ultimately concluding that “men are still good” as you ramp up to the coming of the Justice League like it’s a good thing, and not the formation of a self-appointed, unaccountable junta of planetary overseers.

Yes, if you’re going to double down on Man of Steel’s aspirational language about Superman “giving the people of Earth an ideal to strive for” and “making a better world.” “Be their hero, Clark,” Diane Lane’s Martha Kent tells her son. “Be their angel; be their monument; be anything they need you to be.”

The movie clearly wants Superman to be these things, even if Martha concludes, “Or be none of it. You don’t owe this world a thing. You never did.” It’s just that the filmmakers still have no clue how to deliver. (Lane’s Martha Kent is sadly misused this time out, by the way, and Amy Adams’ Lois Lane, with whom Clark is casually cohabiting, doesn’t fare much better.)

And yes, if you’re going to double down on Man of Steel’s God talk and religious imagery. Batman v Superman is even more charged with theological language and iconography than Avengers: Age of Ultron. Even the Good Friday opening may not be an accident.

A lot of this comes from Jesse Eisenberg’s manic, voluble Lex Luthor Jr., who, like both titular heroes, is an orphan with daddy issues. Luthor was abused by his father, an experience that apparently left him an atheist: “If God is all-powerful, he cannot be all-good; if God is all-good, then he cannot be all-powerful,” he proclaims, as if this classic theological problem were a new insight of his.

Thus, Luthor sees Superman not as a godlike being, but quite the opposite: “Devils don’t come from hell beneath us. They come from the sky.” There’s a lot more of where this came from: Luthor rants about man against god (i.e., Batman v. Superman), and Luthor is more than willing to play the devil himself if it means killing this particular god. (Remember the line “Every creation myth needs a devil” from The Social Network?)

In another sequence a man maimed during Man of Steel’s climatic battle defaces a Superman monument with a graffito indicting him as a “false god.” The problem with all this is that in two films there has been precious little sign of anyone honoring him in any remotely godlike or even heroic way in the first place, apart from an evocative but isolated sequence set in Mexico in which throngs of adoring Mexicanos surround the Man of Steel after he rescues a woman from a fire, all trying to touch him as if he were a living saint.

Strikingly, this sequence happens to be set on Mexico’s Día de los Muertos or Day of the Dead, so several of Superman’s adorers are wearing skull masks or makeup. The symbolic suggestion is that if Superman is a saint, he is a kind of Santa Muerte or “Saint Death” — a macabre, cultic figure whose coming heralds the opposite of the hope we were told in Man of Steel the emblem on his chest symbolized on Krypton.

Holly Hunter is on hand as a U.S. senator trying to call Superman to account. “The world has been so caught up with what he can do,” she declares, “that no one has asked what he should do.” Wait. When exactly was the world caught up with what he could do?

Some defenders of Man of Steel hoped that, after his first downbeat outing, Superman would grow into the role — become the legend he was meant to be. Perhaps, it was optimistically suggested, snapping General Zod’s neck wasn’t a violation of Superman’s famous reverence for life, but its origin; perhaps in the sequel he would …

Nope. If anything, Clark is less Supermanly than ever. “Superman was never real,” he confesses to Lois. “Just a dream of a farmer from Kansas.” (That would be Kevin Costner’s Jonathan Kent, who died possibly the stupidest onscreen death of 2013, all because Clark’s secret was worth more than anything, even his father’s life.)

Trying to buck him up, Lois touches the emblem on his chest, reminding him that it means something. But Clark’s not having any: “It meant something on my world,” he shrugs, “and that doesn’t exist anymore.” Just like the Superman of my youth, apparently. Snyder’s films are so eager to establish that “Superman was never real” that they never permit even the illusion that he ever was.

From the outset Batman v Superman faced the nearly insuperable challenge of trying to lay the foundations for an incipient shared cinematic DC universe (the curiously branded DC Extended Universe), with the deeply flawed Man of Steel as the cornerstone.

The issue, of course, is that Superman isn’t just the first great comic-book superhero, he’s the archetypal superhero par excellence, almost the superhero as such — the Super-man.

Batman is cooler and more popular, of course, and arguably more interesting as a character (though Grant Morrison’s graphic novel All-Star Superman makes a strong case that Superman can be better written than he often is).

Yet Batman needs Superman; the Dark Knight defines himself in contrast to the Man of Steel. (There’s a reason Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns pits an aging Batman first against street thugs, then Two-Face, then the Joker, and finally Superman, his greatest challenge and in a way his defining rival/antagonist.)

“Metropolis is New York in the daytime,” Miller once said. “Gotham City is New York at night.” At best, though, Man of Steel could only imagine Metropolis as New York in late evening. Where does that leave Gotham? Get Superman wrong, and the whole DC universe goes wrong.

So here we get a Batman who is hell on bad guys, literally branding them with the sign of the bat (which we’re told is a death sentence in prison), yet who is easily manipulated by Luthor rather than being the brilliant mastermind he’s supposed to be. What about Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman? Too early to say; Gadot has a nice sense of presence, but she isn’t much more than a female action figure here.

Of course, the film has to get Batman and Superman to fight — a battle that The Dark Knight Returns put at the end of Batman’s long career, with a great deal of implied history and water under the bridge. That fight was inevitable, and, Batman’s bag of tricks notwithstanding, remained competitive as long as it did because Miller’s Superman loved and honored Batman in spite of their falling out and political differences.

Here the fight is artificial and kind of pointless, although the film does have one promising idea: From the outset it roots Batman’s hostility toward Superman in one of the most heavily criticized elements of Man of Steel, the epic destruction and loss of life of the climactic battle, not to mention the fact that both Superman and the threat he faced had the same origin.

The opening of Batman v Superman revisits this pivotal event in human history from the point of view of Bruce Wayne, who owned one of the many skyscrapers leveled in that battle and employed the people who worked there. (Later there’s an urban action scene in which the film makes a point of having a reporter note that it’s in the financial district, which is pretty empty at that time of night.) Of course, the film’s recontextualization of the earlier film’s disaster violence only heightens its perpetuation of Man of Steel’s other problems.

So far I’ve mentioned The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen and All-Star Superman. Hanging over the climax and denouement is another famous comics storyline that fans will see coming a mile off and casual viewers will have a hard time believing in more ways than one.

I kind of admire the filmmakers’ nerve in ending the film the way they do, although it doesn’t work dramatically or emotionally. The problem is the same as the Batman-Superman fight: It’s too early in Superman’s career for this event to pack the punch it ought to.

Not to spoil the the big spoiler, here is a not-terribly-difficult riddle.

Among the film’s many echoes of Christian faith and culture is a well-known English hymn, played on a distinctive instrument, that will remind many viewers of a comparable moment from the denouement of a classic 1980s franchise film.

As it happens, this denouement was recently echoed in a reboot that everyone agrees had much less power than the original. One reason is what happened in the 1980s film involved well-established characters who had known and loved each other for decades, and in the reboot the recast characters are still finding their feet and getting to know each other.

Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe has its flaws, but they did one thing right: They built their universe slowly, establishing the characters one at a time, before bringing them together in The Avengers. Batman v Superman is a case study in the perils of trying to do too much too quickly.

The problem begins with Man of Steel: Superman is supposed to be Batman’s opposite, the positive, upright boy in blue, and Batman is supposed to be the dark, brooding emo boy. They screwed up when they decided to make Superman dark, and everything necessarily goes downhill from there.

Sometimes they may be artistically produced, but I’m getting tired of these so-called “deconstructive” movies and shows that take a dump on beloved franchises or concepts. Watchmen was beautifully executed and multi-layered, and really was something brand new in comics, but its central concept was little more than a cheat: it suggested that superheroes are ultimately motivated by sexual neurosis, and that heroism is pointless. But that does not “deconstruct” superhero comics in any meaningful way; that is, it doesn’t take superheroes apart and show us how they work. All it really does is pervert them. Comparing the canonical DC characters with their Watchmen counterparts, there is nothing but the most superficial resemblance.

But it convinced a lot of people that it was deep, because it was complex and deftly written. Snyder was fooled, so he’s tried to emulate it, and he’s got the DC universe screwed up in the process.

Posted by Wade on Tuesday, Mar, 29, 2016 12:06 PM (EDT):

I kept waiting for Deadpool to show up, crack a couple jokes, kill both these guys, look the audience in the eyes and say “You’re Welcome”.

Posted by Alex G on Sunday, Mar, 27, 2016 8:09 PM (EDT):

Wow. What a review. I’m giving it 5 stars. Thoughtful and on point.

Posted by Steady State on Sunday, Mar, 27, 2016 3:01 PM (EDT):

I didn’t much like it either. It had no center and went on probably too long and was packed as ever with tons of little feminist and diversity micro-lectures all superhero movies have now. I did like that it also however explored the dark side of feminism and modernity, which I see more often now. Even Superman is burnt out and giving up on the anachronistic worldview of his father who died for a dog. And Lois Lane, the you-go-girl feminist worldwide journalist, says, “This means something.” All it really means is that for women to continue to have their cake and eat it too, it’s necessary that men uphold their old obligations while receiving none of their old privileges. That way women can enjoy all their old privileges as women while subject to none of their old obligations. Have their cake and eat it, too. So that’s slowly ending, just as Pope Pius XI warned in Casti Connubii would happen. Even the highest-achieving women like the senator are now looking at jars of “grandma’s peach tea.” And like Lex Luthor said, “The bell can’t be unrung.” This girl should study this film.

“A tremendous mess of awesomeness” is a description we can agree on, I think. Thanks for your kind words. Any time I can write a review as generally negative as this one and have someone who loved the movie call it the best review on the movie they’ve read, I’m pretty sure I got it right.

Posted by Tom McCoy on Friday, Mar, 25, 2016 12:09 PM (EDT):

When it was announce Snyder would be directing, that pretty much killed what little hope I had for this movie. I really hope he’s replaced on the upcoming Justice League film(s). Another movie that’s as divisive as Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice might well sink the DCU outright. Although, if the JL movie is as messy, grim, dark and keeps desperately gesturing at Heavy And Important Themes (TM) without anything to show for it as MOS and DOJ, I don’t think I’d care much.

Posted by Eduardo Canales on Thursday, Mar, 24, 2016 8:25 PM (EDT):

Best review I have read so far on this movie :D
Will definitely be following you in the future, Steven.

I was one of those who loved Man of Steel, and was hoping that Superman and Batman would have been much more established as their heroic & inspiring selves from the source material. This is a version only, one of the many universes in the DC multiverse. Let’s not get too hung up.

Still, I loved the movie and can’t wait to see it again. It is definitely not for everyone, but as a DC fan this was just a tremendous mess of awesomeness =) So much mythology, details, and epic moments from comic stories… And lots to analyze, too!

Posted by MarylandBill on Thursday, Mar, 24, 2016 2:48 PM (EDT):

Its a shame that the best Superman Movies are still Superman I and Superman II from the 70s and early 1980s. If Christopher Reeve’s Superman was too much of a boy scout and a little two campy (and it was both of those things), it at least clued into the concept that Superman cannot, in any way, work as an anti-hero. Even Batman, for all of his alleged darkness works best when he is firmly heroic.

Posted by Mark Shea on Thursday, Mar, 24, 2016 2:29 PM (EDT):

I went ahead and started hating BvS the moment I heard Snyder was making it. It saved me both time and money.

I guess that means I really need to fix that shameful gap in my film viewing.

Yes. Yes you do. And yes to everything else you wrote, too.

Posted by Evan on Thursday, Mar, 24, 2016 1:52 PM (EDT):

Since it took me a minute to figure out which 1980’s franchise film with a recent reboot you were referring to, I guess that means I really need to fix that shameful gap in my film viewing. Assuming, of course, that the 1980’s film you were referring to has the hymn tune New Britain (is that spoiler free enough?) played on the distinctive instrument at said classic denouement.

“Amazing Grace” on bagpipes? Just like Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan?

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